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Thanks. I didn't knew they funded it separately. I still think some part of developers working time going on it. And due to how their marketing works they like

by SXX 9y ago

Thanks. I didn't knew they funded it separately. I still think some part of developers working time going on it. And due to how their marketing works they likely had to adjust usual development pipeline. In most of "normal" games there can be untextured models, unfinished animations until very end while on Star Citizen they try to show eye-candy updates all the time. So I guess this would likely drive development cost up.

wlesieutre 9y ago
That's true, I'm not sure how they account for dev time spent on community videos. But at least on the level of the video equipment and the staff who record and edit the shows, they're not spending out of money donated for game development. I don't know about untextured models and unfinished animations driving up costs. At one point they showed a demo with early draft facial animations and got slammed for it (The Morrow Tour), and since then they've been hesitant to show things that aren't near finished. Stuff's getting to that level of visual polish either way, I think this is more likely to impact whether they publish early drafts of visual features, rather than having an impact on their actual development process. Not that we don't see progress on stuff though. The procedural planets have been repeatedly featured in videos since back since the first teaser (Pupil to Planet) when it had a single material covering the entire planet. More recent demos are much more detailed and have shown what's slated for release in alpha 3.0, including the Levski landing area. Other things like animations do get shown in untextured demo levels, and I remember recently seeing one with a person putting a box on a shelf and clipped his arm through a solid object. So they're not total perfectionists, but they're not 100% open about in-progress features either. If you show something too early and it changes significantly before release, somebody's bound to get upset about it.

by SXX 9y ago

wlesieutre 9y ago

That's true, I'm not sure how they account for dev time spent on community videos. But at least on the level of the video equipment and the staff who record and edit the shows, they're not spending out of money donated for game development. I don't know about untextured models and unfinished animations driving up costs. At one point they showed a demo with early draft facial animations and got slammed for it (The Morrow Tour), and since then they've been hesitant to show things that aren't near finished. Stuff's getting to that level of visual polish either way, I think this is more likely to impact whether they publish early drafts of visual features, rather than having an impact on their actual development process. Not that we don't see progress on stuff though. The procedural planets have been repeatedly featured in videos since back since the first teaser (Pupil to Planet) when it had a single material covering the entire planet. More recent demos are much more detailed and have shown what's slated for release in alpha 3.0, including the Levski landing area. Other things like animations do get shown in untextured demo levels, and I remember recently seeing one with a person putting a box on a shelf and clipped his arm through a solid object. So they're not total perfectionists, but they're not 100% open about in-progress features either. If you show something too early and it changes significantly before release, somebody's bound to get upset about it.